The American Association of Orthodontists (AAO) estimates that more than four million people in the U.S. are wearing braces at any one time. With improvements in the appearance and comfort of braces, and with a trend towards maintaining and improving one's natural smile as the population ages, adult orthodontics is growing rapidly. After orthodontic treatment, patients must wear a retainer or else risk having their teeth “drift” back into malocclusion. With an average treatment period of 26 months, approximately 1.8 million people graduate into removable retainers, a type of dental appliance, every year. Given that former orthodontic patients are recommended to wear their retainers indefinitely following braces, many millions of former orthodontic patients are in the habit of wearing a retainer nightly. Even if they only wear their retainer for seven years after treatment on average, this number equals 12.6 million patients in the U.S. using orthodontic retainers at any one time. For reasons stated above, this number is likely to grow.
The popularity of clear dental appliances or aligners to move teeth is making orthodontic treatment with removable retainer-like devices extremely common. Many manufacturers of this treatment technology now exist, and both orthodontic specialists and general dentists are delivering it. Other removable dental appliances such as bleaching trays, mouth guards, night guards and partial dentures greatly increase the number people in the U.S. wearing removable dental appliances.
However, use of such dental appliances creates problems for users of such appliances in terms of maintenance and sanitization of the device. Users of dental appliances typically just rinse their dental appliances and set them in a plastic case or on the edge of the sink. Germs from both the mouth and the environment gather and breed on them invisibly. Unlike toothbrushes, dental appliances can cost $200 to $500 to replace. It is not cost effective to just throw them away after an illness or when they do not look new. There is not a simple, standard way to keep dental appliances sanitary on a daily basis. Brushing them with a toothbrush only transfers more germs to their surface. Boiling them can deform their plastic construction. There are cleaning tablets and powders available, but they are not widely used due to their messiness and expense, and many do not disinfect the dental appliance but only deodorize them. Thus, there is a need for a device for sanitizing removable dental appliances.